naked capitalism

bmeisen says:

Thank you Yves. Our national liar G. W. Bush guessed that few Americans would witness the carnage his deceit was causing – countless innocent Iraqis murdered, millions in flight for their lives. Manning sacrificed prodigiously to try to correct the damage.

Psychoanalystus says:

And, speaking of war criminals, this week Eric Prince changed the name of his Blackwater for the third time, so he can bid again for contracts in Iraq. And you can be sure that he’ll get new contracts.

Psychoanalystus says:

As a psychologist having observed the nearly complete decay of the conscience and moral values of the American nation as a whole as well as those of each individual American person, this is not surprising. It is not to surprize anyone at this point that the helicopter gunmen joked after having shot children. At this point there is nearly complete darkness in the soul of America, and those of most of its citizens. And there has been darkness there for a long time. We must not forget that it was the American military that dropped 2 (two) atomic bombs on Japanese civilians. We must not forget that it was proud Ametican soldiers who charred children with napalm in Vietnam. And now we have this monstrous Nobel Peace Prize president bombing children from drones. The evil that America now represents does not even deserve prolonged analysys — it is just banal and evil.

Look, any American who served in any branch of the US military needs to be ashamed for having done so.

Again, speaking as a psycholigist who has studied the darkness that now fills the dead soul of America, my conclusion is that this nation, this people, are beyond redemption. America is now, and has been for several decades, in the new Dark Ages. As such, at this point there is only one option for the few sane Americans left: emigrate. There are many, many sane, compassionate, and rational places on this Earth. There is no reason — absolutely no reason — to continue to be part of a monstrous system of death, which is what the United States is today.

Woodrow Wilson says:

Curious to how many posters have actually experienced COMBAT, and I don’t mean serving while combat operations are happening.

It’s nice to be arm-chair QB’s in the comfort of your home/work. Yes, civilians died, but that does in fact happen in all conflicts. In this case, the pilot CLEARLY states what he perceives as weaponry. There’s an old law enforcement saying:

Rather be judged by twelve, than carried by six.

The pilots get a free pass. If you want to stop it, then find a solution to war.

aw70 says:

Chaps, seriously. There is a lot of things that are wrong with the U.S. in general, and with the war in Iraq in particular. But that video, as sickening as it is to watch, is NOT one of these things. At least not directly. It is rather an unbelievable piece of asshattery on the part of the media in general, and Wikileaks in particular (more on this further down), to spin this against the U.S. troops on the ground in the way it was done.

Without access to more information – such as the unredeacted full-resolution (!) video from *both* Apache helicopters involved in this – it is of course not 100% possible to say whether it was really justified to open fire on the people you see in the video. And as I said, it is vile stuff to watch people getting blown to pieces. But based on what can be confirmed about the whole sorry affair, it is entirely possible (and actually probable) that from a military standpoint, the Apache crew acted responsibly. And, given the context of the whole action, sensibly. They had to cover the back of a patrol that was nearby, and if that included pulverising some insurgents who seemingly tried to mess with the patrol, well, then that was their job as well.

War is hell. As such, it should never be started without a damn good reason – and as we all know, it is (to put it very mildly) extremely debatable whether the invasion of Iraq ever qualified in this respect. Still, once the U.S. forces were on the ground, they had to survive, and properly take control of the country, lest total chaos ensue, and even worse stuff happen. Taking control meant, amongst other things, to regularly patrol Baghdad, and disarm (or, if need be, fight) any locals who were directly trying to mess with the U.S. forces, or more often than not were merely out to have some sectarian violence with some other faction of Iraqi “society” that just happened to live nearby.

So, about that video. The thing is… the two Reuters chaps who bought it that day were apparently “embedded” with a group of locals, who were shadowing an armed U.S. patrol in an area of the city that was more or less locked down at that particular point in time. There was a reason why the U.S. patrol was under way with a bunch of Bradleys to cover their backs, and two Apaches overhead. This was not a hearts and minds exercise, this was a heavily armed patrol in an area that was not entirely under control then.

It has never been entirely explained what that group of male Iraqis to whom the two reporters had attached themselves were doing out there, running around in the open in what basically amounted to an urban warfare zone. The last photos taken by the journalists, which were found on their cameras afterwards, show the U.S. fighting vehicles from a fairly close distance – these chaps were provably shadowing the patrol. For whatever purpose. The one thing that is not 100% certain is whether that group of Iraqis was actually armed – which is an important point. If they were, they were, as nasty as that sounds, totally legitimate targets. If not, of course not.

But here is the kicker on that one: what Wikileaks put on the web is a video of what the commander of one of the Apaches saw – but in substantially reduced resolution (i.e. blurred), compared to what the guy in the chopper actually saw on his screen! The optics on these ships are fairly amazing, and the guy who gave the firing order (after claiming they had guns) had a *much* clearer view of what was going on than you now have, who are just judging this by the blurry youtube video. Also, and perhaps even more importantly, only one of the two videos that must exist of this event ever made it to the web. There were *two* Apaches on station above the patrol, and if you listen to the radio conversation, the firing order is actually given by the commander of the other ship, who was apparently in overall command. What that other guy saw on his own video feed has never been publicly shown – all we see is the feed from the Apache that actually fired its cannon. But given the excellent resolution of these cameras, I would seriously doubt that two experienced crews, who both had eyes on the target area, would both make such a serious blunder as to mistake cameras for AK-47s.

Even if they really only ever had access to one of the two videos, it was still utterly disingenuous on the part of Wikileaks to only put a severely reduced-resolution version of this on the web, and present this the way they did. Wikileaks must have known that they were presenting the public with biased information, but still went ahead anyway. “Questionable ethics” does not even begin to describe this.

By the way, having said all this, I actually do agree with ScottW about repeatedly showing this film to those responsible for the whole mess, Clockwork Orange-style. Only that I would have W and Mrs. Cheney & Rumsfeld be the audience, and not Obama – who, for all his faults, was not even elected when this happened.

Max424 says:

Years ago I met a guy who said he had done two tours in Vietnam, as a Door Gunner on a Huey. I was skeptical of this claim, having heard that nobody re-upped to be a Door Gunner — the job was the single most deadly occupation on the planet at the time, and normal folk, even then, simply didn’t volunteer to risk near certain death, twice.

It wasn’t like that, he said. Not quite. It was dangerous, yes, but worth it. The reason: by the end of his first tour, he had mastered the art of the “free 60,” a technique where the gunner swings out the chopper door in a harness, giving him much better firing angles for his hand-held 60 caliber machine gun.

In his harness, a Door Gunner could now fire (almost) directly up, down, fore and aft. As always, he could fire his M-60 in short bursts, or in long bursts, he could aim it, hose it, make combinations with it. All this while the craft might be twisting, hovering, writhing, making high speed passes.

He said sprayed landings, raked dust-offs, shot birds, slaughtered buffalo, sent faster-than-the-speed-sound tracer streams into clouds…

In other words, he was in a shooters paradise (think skeet range, to the 100th power, is I think how he phrased it), and he knew, as an absolute, that he would never get to do anything like it again.

I interrupted: “And how many Mama-sans did you saw in half in your 3D rice paddy shooting gallery? Whilst you were playing God?”

“On purpose? Zip.”

“Ah, and how ’bout those water buffalo? I heard you guys would empty belts into the poor dumb beasts, for target practice.”

“If intel said they were plowing for the VC, my orders were to take them out.”

“Never questioned?”

“Never, ever.”

“Did often miss your intended target by a country mile?”

“Nobody’s perfect with a machine gun.”

“So, we’re talking extensive collateral damage.”

“Depends on how you define it.”

Indeed. Besides, who am I? If the guy was telling the truth, he spent at least 22 months at the very tip-of-the-spearpoint of the American “effort” in Vietnam, meaning; every few days when he had to swing out that chopper door in order to return fire, he made of himself a candidate for the Medal of Honor, in my opinion.

barrisj says:

The invasion/occupation in and of itself was a giant war crime, and all actions by US and “coalition of the willing” military that resulted in “unintended” deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians pursuant to that policy regrettably will never be punished. The Haditha massacre was but one of countless numbers of atrocities committed by the invaders, as was the levelling of Fallujah, an act of barbarity similar to Nazi/SS destruction of villages across occupied Europe as “reprisals” for anti-Wehrmacht partisan actions. No consequences of any sort for the perpetrators, and a sorrowful and painful legacy for the victims. Does anyone seriously foresee a “Nuremberg” moment for those directly responsible for this obscenity?